then the man shall bring his wife to the priest, and shall bring her offering for her: one tenth of an ephah of barley meal. He shall pour no oil on it, nor put frankincense on it, for it is a meal offering of jealousy, a meal offering of memorial, bringing iniquity to memory.
To deal with a suspected adulteress (sotah) according to the prescribed law
The cited verse
The Hebrew (Masoretic Text)
וְעָשָׂה לָהּ הַכֹּהֵן אֵת כָּל־הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת
In Maimonides’ words
How Maimonides defines this commandment in his Sefer HaMitzvot — his own words, shown as a primary source.
היא שצונו בדין סוטה. והוא אמרו יתברך איש כי תשטה אשתו. וכבר התבארו משפטי מצוה זו כלם איך ישקה אותה ואיך יקריב קרבנה וזולת זה מתנאיה במסכת סוטה. (נשא את ראש, נשים הלכות סוטה פ"ג):
That is that He commanded us about the law of the sotah (suspected adulteress). And that is His, may He be blessed, saying, "if a man’s wife has gone astray" (Numbers 5:12). And the regulations of this commandment - how she is made to drink, how she offers her sacrifice and her [other] stipulations besides this - have all already been explained in Tractate Sotah. (See Parashat Nasso; Mishneh Torah, Woman Suspected of Infidelity 3)
Hebrew: Sefer HaMitzvot, Warsaw 1883 (public domain). English: Sefaria Edition, trans. Rabbi Francis Nataf, 2021 (CC0). Via Sefaria; translator’s footnotes omitted.
Literary form: a ritual instruction
Applicability
How the catalog describes where and when this commandment applies. These are independent descriptions, not a verdict on which laws still count.
- Requires a standing Temple
Classical halakhic consequences
The consequences the classical halakhah attaches to this commandment, grouped by who imposes them. Where a category has none recorded, that absence is itself meaningful.
Imposed by a court
No court-imposed penalty is recorded.
At the hands of Heaven
No divinely-imposed consequence is recorded.
Ritual remedy
No ritual remedy is recorded.
How the streams of Judaism treat this commandment
The streams of Judaism read the same commandment differently — an ongoing plurality, not a ranking. Each position below is reported as the catalog records it; none is presented as the correct one.
- Orthodox Binding, with modification
- Conservative Rejected
- Reform Rejected
- Reconstructionist Rejected
- Karaite Position not stated
24 of 613 commandments have been examined in depth so far — this one is queued.
How later traditions received this commandment
How later traditions read or reworked this commandment, each attributed to its own voice. The catalog’s own classification of each reception is shown as it records it, never adopted as GEBible’s.
Rabbinic aggadah
- Sifre Numbers §7 expanded it homiletically
- Numbers Rabbah 9 expanded it homiletically
Philo of Alexandria
- De Specialibus Legibus 3.52-62 rationalized it Philo discusses the jealousy ordeal within his broader treatment of adultery law in De Specialibus Legibus book 3; the rationalizing handling is attributed without claiming precise verse-level isolation of the sotah material
Josephus
- Ant. 3.270-273 rationalized it
The New Testament
- John 8:3-11 The catalog describes this reception as: thematic parallel proposed Some scholars propose the Pericope adulterae engages the sotah tradition's logic that communal guilt undermines the right to accuse; this linkage is a modern interpretive suggestion rather than a settled reading
The Qur'an and hadith
- Q 24:6-9 carried a parallel, with divergence
Beside the older legal codes of its world
The commandment set beside the ancient Near-Eastern legal collections scholars compare it to — a descriptive comparison, not a claim of dependence.
- code of hammurabi river ordeal for wife suspected of adultery without proof Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §132 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- code of hammurabi exculpatory oath for accused wife not caught in the act Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §131 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- middle assyrian laws river ordeal in cases of suspected sexual misconduct/slander Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence A §17 Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
- laws of ur nammu §13 sorcery accusation resolved by river ordeal (only loosely analogous); §14 false accusation of a wife's unchastity (closer analogue) — both subject to textual reconstruction Relationship to the parallel: parallel with divergence §§13-14 (reconstructed; numbering varies by edition, text lacunose) Roth, Law Collections 2nd ed. (1997)
Where this commandment meets modern human-rights frameworks
One modern normative lens, attributed to it — not GEBible’s assessment. Each row names the framework it measures against and the catalog’s own classification of the relation.
This framework catalogues tensions; it records agreement in only one of its entries. The near-total tension rate is the shape of the instrument, not a finding.
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Article 1
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The sotah procedure subjects only women to a gender-specific judicial ordeal triggered solely by a husband's jealousy with no evidentiary threshold; no parallel ordeal exists for men suspected of adultery, constituting discrimination on the basis of sex in judicial proceedings.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
The ritual institutionalizes asymmetric scrutiny of female sexuality: a husband's unverified jealousy is legally sufficient to initiate a coercive physical and ritual ordeal against his wife, with no reciprocal mechanism through which a wife can submit her husband to equivalent scrutiny.
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UDHR Article 10; ICCPR Article 14
This framework classifies the relation as a direct contradiction.
UDHR Article 10 and ICCPR Article 14 guarantee a fair and public hearing before an independent and impartial tribunal; the sotah ordeal replaces neutral adjudication with a divine-oracular procedure in which the accused woman's guilt or innocence is determined by the physical effects of a potion administered by a priest.
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general principle
This framework classifies the relation as abrogated in practice.
Rabbinic tradition records that Rabban Yoḥanan ben Zakkai abolished the sotah procedure after the destruction of the Temple (Mishnah Sotah 9:9); the commandment is doubly inoperative — requiring both a functioning Temple and a Sanhedrin — and Maimonides classifies it as practically suspended.